Post by Victor Adelai on Aug 11, 2015 12:44:09 GMT -8
Seattle, as it happened, had its own charming organization that did suicide prevention and teen outreach programs. These sorts of organizations were usually just aching for some validation and prestige. It wouldn’t have taken much to get a job of some significance with them managing sound-bites (whatever those were) for the general public. Actual PHD’s willing to do work off the clock were understandably rare. However, to maintain the integrity of these experiments, he would need to be a relative unknown.
So, I talked my way onto volunteering to work the phones, the late shift, on the teen-link lines. Those who were judged most ‘at-risk’. They gave me my own desk (which is shared with some middle-aged woman during the daytime), my own cubicle (which housed two desks- my late night partner in crime a grad student trying to pad his extracurricular activities), and a headset (which was mine, but I wasn’t the original owner. Gross). The training had been something I had talked my way out of. Further, I had spoken to my supervisor for a few hours in our interview… a few quiet, alone hours, and now it was a near certainty that my calls would go unmonitored. Everything was to plan. Now I just needed a call.
The first day, there had been nothing. A few hang ups. A prank call. My cubicle partner had spent the better part of the night writing loan applications.
The second day was just as bad. In fact, I didn’t get a call of substance until I’d been there nearly a week. The first call I took where I felt I’d made a difference was to a boy named Jerry.
Jerry was sixteen. He’d recently come to the self-discovery that he was a homosexual. After assuring him that the general population of mental health professionals no longer viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder, his true problem became clear. Jerry had been making an impassioned attempt to woo a young lady, hoping to keep these feelings at bay. He felt that the world would reject him and judge him. After nearly an hour of soothing conversation, I convinced the poor boy that the world judges us all, all of the time, for nearly anything we do. Allowing that to stop us would be the greatest act of cowardice, and Jerry was no coward. In fact, he was going to be honest himself and everyone else in his life. Make a concerted effort to be truer to himself. And if that meant years of anonymous sex in bizarre clubs, and an early death from some yet unknown disease, he might as well grab that destiny by the horns.
He sounded like a new person when he finally disconnected the call.
It felt good to help people. Sometimes, all they really needed was permission to do what they’d wanted to do the whole time. That, and keeping that secret flame of desire lit for whatever actually revved their engine. I believe Dr. Sven has found an appropriate place to moonlight between experiments. We’ll see what my next call brings.
So, I talked my way onto volunteering to work the phones, the late shift, on the teen-link lines. Those who were judged most ‘at-risk’. They gave me my own desk (which is shared with some middle-aged woman during the daytime), my own cubicle (which housed two desks- my late night partner in crime a grad student trying to pad his extracurricular activities), and a headset (which was mine, but I wasn’t the original owner. Gross). The training had been something I had talked my way out of. Further, I had spoken to my supervisor for a few hours in our interview… a few quiet, alone hours, and now it was a near certainty that my calls would go unmonitored. Everything was to plan. Now I just needed a call.
The first day, there had been nothing. A few hang ups. A prank call. My cubicle partner had spent the better part of the night writing loan applications.
The second day was just as bad. In fact, I didn’t get a call of substance until I’d been there nearly a week. The first call I took where I felt I’d made a difference was to a boy named Jerry.
Jerry was sixteen. He’d recently come to the self-discovery that he was a homosexual. After assuring him that the general population of mental health professionals no longer viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder, his true problem became clear. Jerry had been making an impassioned attempt to woo a young lady, hoping to keep these feelings at bay. He felt that the world would reject him and judge him. After nearly an hour of soothing conversation, I convinced the poor boy that the world judges us all, all of the time, for nearly anything we do. Allowing that to stop us would be the greatest act of cowardice, and Jerry was no coward. In fact, he was going to be honest himself and everyone else in his life. Make a concerted effort to be truer to himself. And if that meant years of anonymous sex in bizarre clubs, and an early death from some yet unknown disease, he might as well grab that destiny by the horns.
He sounded like a new person when he finally disconnected the call.
It felt good to help people. Sometimes, all they really needed was permission to do what they’d wanted to do the whole time. That, and keeping that secret flame of desire lit for whatever actually revved their engine. I believe Dr. Sven has found an appropriate place to moonlight between experiments. We’ll see what my next call brings.